Photoshop & Premier Elements 7 & 9

Reader Reviews: Adobe Photoshop Elements

Version Reviewed (i.e. Photoshop Elements 8):

Photoshop & Premier Elements 7 & 9

Approximate Date of Purchase:

December 2010

My Review

The image editing tool is very good and very complex. The organizer concept is great but it works so poorly on Windows 7 64 bit that I cannot recommend this product. Since the organizer is the primary means of accessing your photos and videos you have to use it to effectively use both the video (Premier) tools and photo tools.

Adobe is so intent on selling online backup storage that the backup/synchronization process will overwhelm most computers with large photo libraries. Even when it is turned off, it will frequently turn itself back on and slow your system to a crawl.

Premier has so many bugs that it is very difficult to complete a DVD project without some errors such as menus not working or not appearing anything like they do in Premier.

What is the best feature of Photoshop Elements?

The image editing tool is extremely powerful but could easily take weeks if not months to master.

How could Photoshop Elements be improved?

Make the organizer work as described in Adobe's literature. It frequently does not work as advertise, particularly when selecting photos based upon tags. This bug has been there since version 6 and is still there in version 9.

Was Photoshop Elements a good value for the price paid?

No, it wastes far too much time causing the user to find work-arounds for bugs.

In what ways do you use Photoshop Elements?

I'm about to abandon it for another product. Still doing product research. I was using it to create family videos and slide shows but found that I spent many hours on the phone with Adobe support on bugs that have been in their product for years.